I think it depends on the driver too but if 850 is out of range
what range would boating be more enjoyable with the xr's ?

775?

Howard

I think it depends on the driver too but if 850 is out of range
what range would boating be more enjoyable with the xr's ?

775?

Howard

I would also suggest having the gears cryoed.....if you search it here there are a few threads about the process and it all seems positive.......I had my lower gears done this winter and will see this season how they hold up........there are a few others here that have already done this and will probably chime in.......

We are all in agreement that a Bravo will not last as long as the SSM series or the Konrad series.But we are on the subject of Bravos/mods,and as far as Bravos go,the best luck we have had is a Maxx tower to stabilize the gears.

I would save my 800-900hp engine money and build 650-700hp motors with some stout drives instead. What fun is having to baby those motors all the time and avoiding air?

Jack up the drive shower and run an ARNESON under it LOL

Howard, there many variables with the Bravo drives, but there are a couple of guys in Michigan who rebuild the Bravo's who can make them more reliable than out of the box. I had my drives built by "Mr. Gadgets"/Dick who does an excellent job of assembly. He built my XR's about 200hrs ago.

Another guy you can contact is "Articfriends" (Smitty). Apparently, he has been working on the developement of alternate grade material gears for the Bravo XR for the future which could be interesting, but for now he has an advanced gear treatment program that entails a 5-stage treatment process that can be done on your existing gears vs a one or two stage cryo treatment.

I have truly never known of a better "test bed" than him with his rebuilt drives. I think he has gone through something like 6 sets of test gears tested on his own boat with 1000+hp and goes out and intensionally beats the tar out of his test drives to see what survives and what dies----and Articfriends is brutally honest about his test results and always reports about it here on OSO. You can do a search.

My engines are only naturally aspirated 565 cubes in a 32' Active Thunder....so, I'm not really the best testimonial story on XR drives for someone like you who's interested in the 800hp mark in a 38' boat, but the next time I have Mr. Gadgets rebuild my drives I plan on having my gears treated by Articfriends with the 5-stage treated gears in them.

Thanks Kaama

Your best bet, switch to Konrad's. You'll than be bullet prove.

If you are under 14000lbs I would go with B-Max alot cheaper than Konrad although I hear good things and you don't need a trans.